Dualism versus materialism (Identity)

by dhw, Sunday, July 30, 2017, 10:48 (2433 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: The final contradiction. You have always argued that the “soul” conceives of ideas, but now you have turned full circle and it is the brain that conceives of ideas. You may be right. Welcome to the world of materialism.

DAVID: Ended not just yet. The problem in your responses is that you refuse to recognize that when I use the word 'brain' I carry with it the full implication of my phrase 'brain/self/soul/consciousness' as a seamless arrangement in which a wet material brain uses a received consciousness much like software. I view each enlargement of the brain as if it were a better computer with newer and better software (consciousness). Therefore able to develop better concepts and create more. I've explained this over and over.

I don’t recall you ever using the single phrase brain/self/soul/consciousness. The whole point of your dualism is that there are two separate elements, mind and body, or soul and brain, that work together. The contradiction has always been that one moment you have the self/soul/consciousness using the brain, then the next you have the brain using the self/soul/consciousness. You have generally agreed, however, that it is the self/soul/consciousness that produces the ideas, but last time you had the brain producing the ideas. Yes, they work together seamlessly, but one does the thinking and the other supplies the information and carries out instructions. This could hardly be clearer. In your computer image, the self is the software that tells the computer (brain) what to do. You contradict yourself whenever you say it is the computer that tells the software what to do.


Complete thread:

 RSS Feed of thread

powered by my little forum